Cat whisperer needed

The Queen of Spades needs help. Well, RantWoman needs help dealing with The Queen of Spades. The Queen of Spades is RantWoman's feline staff. As with any reliable staff, the Queen of Spades has and and has assumed several critical duties.


Among the duties she has taken on:


--Herding the human to bed. RantWoman suspects that the Queen of Spades is selfishly preoccupied with things like warm cat furniture. Still the bigger problem is that RantWoman cannot be relied up to go to bed before she falls asleep on her own and SOMETIMES the Queen of Spades has a positive effect in this direction.


--Keeping the window box and as much of the airspace outside the window as she can see free of anything that flies. There are petty problems with these efforts--like that silly pane of glass in the way. Still, the Queen of Spades does really well on the audio hunting effects and even makes other kinds of hunting twitches.


--Keeping the feathers on the string on the pole under control. Well, this task is apparently so fascinating that the human has to be begged several times a day to get the feathers moving just so the Queen of Spades can save the household from such rudeness.


Those are the good points. The Queen of Spades is a challenge in other respects. Problem behaviors include:

--attacking RantWoman's ankles and knees with enough vigor, unpredictably enough to draw blood.

--attacking RantWoman's fingers and wrists while RantWoman slaves away at the computer.

--attempting to help edit whatever RantWoman is working at on the computer.

Other slightly odd behaviors:

--licking RantWoman's face as if she were a great big kitten, also reported by previous human. Cute, affectionate, except cat tongues are REALLY rough.

--sometimes pooping just outside the box

The back story:
RantWoman first heard of The Queen of Spades from Caregiver Drama Friend. The Queen of Spades was living in the neighborhood and, barely more than a kitten herself when she fell under the sway of a big orange tom who also lived in the neighborhood. The Queen of Spades showed up already preggers, one more soul off the streets seeking succor at The Big Purple Group Home .

The Queen of Spades took up residence near the rain barrel and some intermittent laundry-related heat source, cajoled the humans into feeding her, birthed and reared her kittens. RantWoman probably visited at some point during all of this, but has no idea whether the Queen of Spades would remember. When the last of the kittens found homes, the Queen of Spades went to live indoors with Previous Human.

The Queen of Spades came to RantWoman last summer first as a catsit. Her previous human was headed out of town for two weeks. Previous human dropped the Queen of Spades off with necessary supplies and said as soon as kitty was let out of the carrier that RantWoman probably would not see her for a few days.

RantWoman made sure that cat food and litter were set up in appropriate places and went out for a couple hours. When RantWoman came back she took a guess about places a kitty might hide, slid her hand into the first one on her list and encountered a cold wet nose and some whiskers. Ever since, RantWoman and the kitty have been what apparently passes for fast friends. The Queen of Spades licks and purrs over her human and then she goes all psycho for no reason that RantWoman can divine. The Queen of Spades is much too young to have arthritis or some of the other older kitty ouchies that caused RantWoman's previous feline staff, The Queen of Meow, sometimes to inflict pain on her human. WHAT GIVES?

Is the Queen of Spades bored?

Suggest some easy, cheap ways to keep the Queen of Spades amused. Extra points if they do not require human intervention.

Is it diet? The Queen of Meow liked both cantaloupe and very occasionally a bit of broccoli. One try with the cantaloupe: the Queen of Spades was interested but she threw up so no more cantalope. No interest whatsoever in broccoli. Marginally more interest in fish than the Queen of Meow, but basically a creature of simple preferences for minimal variation in diet.

Other words of wit and wisdom?